Ward Churchill’s fight to regain his job at the University of Colorado got a new life today when the Colorado Supreme Court agreed to hear his appeal.

Churchill, who has argued that he lost academic tenure and his teaching job as a result of his controversial essays, will get to argue that his First Amendment rights were violated when he was fired in 2007.

The university had ruled that Churchill’s essay, in which he compared victims of the Sept. 11 attacks to a Nazi, was protected speech. But during the investigation, other academics came forward to complain that Churchill had plagiarized some of his other work, and the university fired him for academic misconduct.

The professor was originally awarded $1 by a Denver jury which ruled his First Amendment rights were violated in the initial investigation that eventually led to the new evidence and his dismissal. But Denver District Judge Larry Naves set the verdict aside and directed a verdict in favor of the university.

The Colorado Court of Appeals last year upheld Naves decision.

The Supreme Court this morning announced they would decide:

— Whether the university’s investigation of Churchill’s writings and essays “can constitute an adverse employment action for the purposes of a First Amendment claim when, as a result of the investigation, the tenured professor also experiences adverse employment action in the form of termination.”

— “Whether the granting of quasi-judicial immunity to the Regents of the University of Colorado for their termination of a tenured professor comports with federal law.”

— “Whether the denial of equitable remedies for termination in violation of the First Amendment undermines” federal law.

A schedule for oral arguments has not yet been posted by the Supreme Court.

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